Falkor said:Zeem said:Falkor said:I was very happy to see the strong response against PLEX from the community.
I've seen a few people say, "but cosmetics would be ok."
I want to register my strong opposition to this point. No, cosmetics for real money are not OK. Absolutely not.
In EQ1, when you saw someone who had finally gotten their epic, the fact that the epics were pretty much the only weapons with animations made it like "Damn, that guy is badass, he got his epic!" The cosmetic value is maybe as important as the stat value of items. The cosmetic is a reward for hard work and effort just like good stats on an item are a reward. And I think we should go back to the days where if there is animation on a weapon, it really means something. Not a level 10 Sword of Fire and everyone has one.
With the situational gear they have said they are having, I was always for a gear set that is apperence only that you can "switch" or rotate too while in town or just out of combat or in combat if you want to fight with gear that has no stats. I can see cosmetic gear as gear with no stats and it actually replaces the equipped gear not just change the apperence. In eq2 I would put on a robe on my Iksar paladin for a bit fo roleplay in town but I had to take off my BP to do it. I was going for the cloaked figure look. So if they add cosmetic stuff I would want it to actual replace the gear being worn in a gear rotational set.
I'm all for cosmetic gear, don't get me wrong. Just not for real money. It should be bought from tailors in game, using in game money. And it shouldn't be flaming swords or anything extravagant. My opinion, of course.
Indeed..player economy, crafters being used instead of cash shops.
When it comes to curbing gold-selling, I think we need to return to the oldschool approach, but maybe add some new fancy legal language in the TOS. First and foremost, trial players shouldn't be able to communicate through global channels, PM's, shout, or mailing. We need a robust security infrastructure that allows VR staff to quickly identify those who are trying to advertise gold-selling services, and then deal with them just as quickly. If there were 2-3 full time employees, maybe a /bin system could work?
Any/all gold-selling related reports are automatically sent to a shared bin where any VR staff member can retrieve them and open up their investigation. If the same player is reported multiple times, rather than creating a duplicate report, the system would automatically detect that the offending player is already in the database and simply add a tally next to their name. Once that player is dealt with, they are universally removed from the system.
With all the advancements in technology, I don't see it being too difficult to track digital footprints. Rather than needing absolute proof that someone is guilty, maybe it would be a better approach if "sound judgment" was considered enough. With enough circumstantial evidence, I think VR should be able to render swift verdicts that suspend or ban suspected criminals. They don't have to be permanent. If someone stands accused, they should have an opportunity to present their case and defend themself.
I also like the idea of VR using covert teams that try to catch people in the act, whether it's buying or selling. Ignorance is no excuse for the law. You can add a disclaimer to the log-in screen, or during loading screens that reminds players that RMT is absolutely not tolerated, and that VR will have an active presence in the community to try and weed people out. Send out a monthly report to let the entire community know how many players were banned for RMT related offenses.
This is just one of those things that I think should be attacked head-on. We need passionate people placed in a position where they can actually make a difference. Maybe we need a "gold selling profiler" ... you could even do what the government does with hackers, and try to hire a former gold-farmer to get a better understanding of their inner operations. Let them help define how things work and what to keep an eye out for. If someone looks/talks/walks/smells like a gold-seller, they probably are. My hope is that VR can attack this problem from a position of strength. We need to be two steps ahead.
Mathir said:Aradune said:
Having a monthly sub fee and then selling expansions/DLCs is how we've been modeling our business plan and it is very profitable without resorting to changing the revenue model. Additionally, changing the revenue model to include RMT and pay2win is not compatible with how we are designing the game with an emphasis on hand crafted content, community, challenge, shared experiences, etc. I've seen first hand what cash shops do to an MMO: the designers end up being rewarded for and focusing on putting interesting items into the shop instead of adding new features, content, etc. They end up looking for ways to make money short term and lose track of retention and a healthy game long term. This in turn makes the game less sticky and also focusses the team on monetizing a small minority of players as opposed to monetizing everyone through a subscription fee.
You can see the snowball effect above, the focus on the few and not the many, the focus on the short term and not making a great long term game, etc. It's really horrible to watch first hand but I was there when this happened at SoE. I saw it, and we will *not* be gong there with Pantheon.
I've read through this thread and seen all the replies, so I know you've stated you're not going in the Krono direction. I have a massive amount of experience with this, some of my friends earn their RL income selling Krono and items on the EQ progression servers. The problem is when the Krono (Plex) is tradeable off an account. That makes the entire game a business. Every decent item becomes money for rent. The concept could work just fine if the Krono is not tradeable and binds to your account. In the end, you'd still have gold farmers piling up gold to sell to people to purchase Krono, so the initial farming problem still remains, but you've added a profitable gold sink to the economy. This would be the only way it would work, and it wouldn't be pay to win.
If you want to make extra money without being pay to win, charge for bank space. GW2 did that and made a ton. Charge for housing, you'll make a ton. And those that don't care, won't get the house. You could limit crafting to one profession per account, and charge like $5 to unlock additional crafting profession options. Character slots is another easy way to make a little extra. Also, dances and emotes, people love those. Give them some really cool animation options to buy. Another one would be a Lore Book. Charge $5 to unlock and then as the player plays the game, every mob and location goes into the book with some lore and stats. I know I'd pay $5 to look at something like that, but I love lore. An area EQ2 made quite a bit of money was on animated plushies that you put in your home and let run around like pets. These are just some examples of a cash shop that would not be pay to win and would bring extra fun and flavor to the game, plus additional income for you. I'm sure there are quite a few more.
Be strategic with this. Most of us are here to support your company and this type of MMO. It's easy to toss in an extra $5 or so here and there for permanent quality of life upgrades, especially when you know it helps the company and future expansion content.
I'd be down with animated plushie pets. I'm a collector so a minimal $5 to unlock a new thing to do, such as a Lore book would be alright. Just as long as these things don't get exaggerated and over the top. Like that one game charging $2000.00 to unlock something ingame. THAT is over the top.
Cana
dvious1 said:Personally, I would be willing to pay $20.00 a month instead of the usual $15.00 a month subscription fee to ensure a cash to ingame currency exchange never see the light of day.
I'd pay $30.00 a month. I pay $15.00 a month now for Netflix and I never watch Netflix. Maybe a movie or a show very rarely. So something like this game, where I'll play 20 hours a week, or more, I'd pay for that quality.
I think I'd rather have a gift shop where you can buy t-shirts and mugs and goofy toys for real money than a gift shop where you only buy pixels. I know that's more of an investment since you have to find ways to produce said real items when pixel products are only an entry in a database, but real stuff has no impact on gameplay.
Ainadak said:@Zeem - I don't think there are any tricky legalities here. I could be wrong, but I think most games have you sign in the TOS that the game company can ban you if they wish to. There's no legal recourse for entrapment, they banned you and you're out of luck. There's no "you have to prove that I was the one doing RMT", they just ban you based on their best judgement. Are the gold farmers going to take VR to court? I would hate to see them going after buyers though. Maybe they're having a bad day and wouldn't have considered buying gold for the item they want if they didn't have someone shoving the offer in their face. The morality of entrapment does still apply here, which is why it's a even a legal term to begin with.
They would really have to figure out if this is something worth their time and effort, but I bet with one employee paid full time you could ban a TON of gold selling accounts. Also, you could consider banned accounts as profit for VR if they get replaced at full market value by the gold farmers :).
It's like any brick and mortar store, or restaurant, here in Canada they DO have the right to refuse you service, you are on their premises (servers, realms, shards) and therefore a guest. If you break the house rules, get warnings, do it again, ban hammer.
Cana
I would like to make a personal opinion to clarify my issue. I don't care about P2W. At all. If people want to spend their money, then let them. I care about the side effects, mainly two of them:
1.) Auction inflation. If game currency can be manipulated with real currency then it's Germany 1930 all over again. Mind you, people are very clever in manipulating game currencies.
2.) Botters. These turds are all over the place. They ruin great places to play, and fill all the chat channels with garbage.
This is why if you want to consider strategies like Plex/ Kronos, then please lock it in it's own tight knit environment and have a plan B, C, and D ready because they will find loopholes.
I suppose there would eventually be a discussion that forced me to post on it
One avenue that seems inadequately explored in monetization, though it does already exist to a small degree in some games, is ad-hoc marketing partnerships wherein companies like Razer reward essentially worthless in-game items and titles in exchange for (in their case) Social Media "likes"
The advertising/marketing industry is still largely based in very old technique, with a few notable exceptions, for example: Auto Racing
Race Cars and their drivers are covered in brand names, and the fans of those teams are much more likely to favor those products because the sponsors are seen as supporting something they love
The vast majority of advertising and marketing is seen as distracting or obstructing the enjoyment of something the customer is trying to enjoy because most marketing tries to get us to buy something we probably shouldn't
Obviously, no sponsorship deal should be physically indicated in the game, so no corporate logos on cosmetic armor and no "Campbell's Soup Winter-Fest"
A game that does not yet exist with who knows how many fans already paying for it has enough credibility to begin forging real partnerships with advertisers in such a way as to create an actual income stream
The questions your already-paying soon-to-be-players could answer would be along the lines of:
What gaming related products do you already purchase?
What Pantheon related products would you purchase if you could find them?
What type of in-game items would you be excited to receive in exchange for buying or supporting products from non-VR companies?
What kind of scumbaggery would cause you to opt-out of such a system?
What kind of stipulations would need to be made to get you to opt-in to such a system?
Other than "liking" or "following" something on social media or buying a product, what sort of sponsored event or contest would you participate in to gain rewards?
how far do you think something like this could go?
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Your designers could work with players to build items and events players actually want to receive as rewards for participation, structured in tiers, so VRs marketing people could offer a range of partnership programs from a really cool one-off event in game with rewards for everyone ($$$,) sponsoring a writing contest with rewards that go from a cool title to a unique pet or mount ($$,) or some cheesy social media thing that gives low-level rewards of some kind ($)
Just as games are designed to give greater rewards for more effort, so too should a project like this, so the more a partner invests, the greater the appreciation would be from our player-base
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Now, to hopefully pre-empt reiteration from those that have protested any sort of cosmetics in the game, I would add my voice to that faction by saying I would really love a tenet level commitment from VR that we should not have to endure immersion breaking silliness from any addition to the game world, be it bikini clad warriors (or any non-armor armor,) horse/pumpkin head cosmetics, playable panda races, rubber-chicken weapon skins, non-lore based mounts or pets, etc.... but I'll throw that in the appropriate thread when I find it or when it is started
Celandor said:On the surface, I have no problem with cosmetic items or housing items in cash stores as a revenue source, especially for a small indy game developer.
However it's an established fact that "plushies" are a gateway drug to potions, rez scrolls, temp buff rings...
I'd prefer to see potions, rez scrolls, temp buff rings (if they exist at all) crafted by players. Keep the crafters in business.
sorn said:I think I'd rather have a gift shop where you can buy t-shirts and mugs and goofy toys for real money than a gift shop where you only buy pixels. I know that's more of an investment since you have to find ways to produce said real items when pixel products are only an entry in a database, but real stuff has no impact on gameplay.
I think this is a good idea too. Monklybusiness used to support itself with a RL swag gift store. While a website is no where near as expensive to run as a game companies every little bit can help. Honestly most of the good images and icons can be pulled directly from concept art and if paired with quality base products you make premo advertisement products that go everywhere your fans do.
A Pantheon endorsement *would* encourage me to buy a game-related device such as a keyboard, mouse or even monitor. Though I wouldn't get garbage or overpay much for that privilege. That may be a potential source of revenue as well as publicity for the game, though I suspect they couldn't get much for it - this is Pantheon not WoW.
Few if any of us want in-game advertising, we play to escape reality after all. Though if the best weapon in the game was a Blade Cuisinart I would view it as a Might and Magic II easter egg not an advertisement by a food processing company. Given a choice, though, better Murasama as a Wizardry I easter egg.
To the discussion around botters and RMT farmers, would it be viable to gate chat and trading behind the proposed mentoring system in some way?
It seems the core demographic of Pantheon is very interested in protecting Terminus from this scourge, so what if we could sign up to be mentors that would take on new players, play with them enough to verify they were actually intending to play the game, and then vouch for them to some small degree, which would then open up the social tools
The mentors could be filtered for language spoken, and the vouching process would include notes or a checkbox report from the mentor (or both) and then linked to that player via a reporting feature whereby if someone else in the game suspects botting, bad trade or RMT farming, they could right click and their message could go back to their mentor and a GM
Sure, RMT farmers would figure out how to mentor themselves, but doing so would only create connections that GMs could use to more easily uncover networks once a few bad actors were reported
If someone came a across a suspected bot in game and right-clicked only to find the report to mentor option greyed out, that would be a sure bet that toon was never intended to actually play the game as was very likely a bot or farmer
@Preechr - You bring up a very interesting idea. I like your vouching mechanic and additional mechanics or alternatives on the same theme are definitely possible. If you have metrics for tracking who associates with who (we already know that you'll need help through Pantheon), then bad actors who coordinate with each other can be tracked. Maybe every few minutes the game logs who is near you. If people start getting caught botting, then the web begins to appear.
Gold farming is (probably, I don't actually know this) a large scale operation and requires in-game infrastructure to support. Pantheon is already making a great start in this battle by having a long levelling process with a requirement for group play, which beefs up the infrastructure needed to get the ball rolling with farming. I guess I just think that taking down a farming operation would be a nice job for a retired detective looking for some extra money :).
Ainadak said:@Preechr - You bring up a very interesting idea. I like your vouching mechanic and additional mechanics or alternatives on the same theme are definitely possible. If you have metrics for tracking who associates with who (we already know that you'll need help through Pantheon), then bad actors who coordinate with each other can be tracked. Maybe every few minutes the game logs who is near you. If people start getting caught botting, then the web begins to appear.
Gold farming is (probably, I don't actually know this) a large scale operation and requires in-game infrastructure to support. Pantheon is already making a great start in this battle by having a long levelling process with a requirement for group play, which beefs up the infrastructure needed to get the ball rolling with farming. I guess I just think that taking down a farming operation would be a nice job for a retired detective looking for some extra money :).
lol. This some serious big brother craziness. You're essentially talking about some kind of guilt by association mechanic. And what data do you have that proves people who bot or exploit would be near each other when doing so? There is none, it's pure conjecture. You want the game to TRACK the other players you are near? Do you have ANY idea the kind of resources required to make that happen? First of all, that's a tremendous amount of data that needs to be stored, and THEN that data needs to be leveraged somehow with some kind of business intelligence platform. You can't just dump that info into a database and be done, it has to be exposed in some meaningful manner. It always makes me shake my head when people who don't understand software/web/server/db development start throwing out these ideas like they are trivial.
It seems like every thread these days is some fluff thread that has nothign to do with the core of the game. At this point: Who cares if there's a living dragon that you zone into, it's a zone that has a theme, great. Who cares if corpses poof or dissolve or burst into a mass of flies? What we should care about are the core mechanics of spellcasting, combat, pathing, leveling, zone design, quest design, loot, etc. Do we really want the devs to be spending resources tweaking the game engine to play pretty cutscene videos while the game loads or do we want them working on AI?
Also, get off my lawn, old man yells at cloud.
random thoughts... any ways to make any transfers complicated?
I suppose that eventually (thinking about the Nephele think 3 years ahead post) that players are not deterred for elaborate in game buying mechanisms when they really want something.
If a famer spends, say, 3 days farming and another 3 days for a single transfer of sufficient amount, then it would not be profitable. (assuming expensive items are not tradeble)
Add a tax collector, or, if you carry much gold, highway man spawn and pick you clean?
Krixus said:lol. This some serious big brother craziness. You're essentially talking about some kind of guilt by association mechanic. And what data do you have that proves people who bot or exploit would be near each other when doing so? There is none, it's pure conjecture. You want the game to TRACK the other players you are near? Do you have ANY idea the kind of resources required to make that happen? First of all, that's a tremendous amount of data that needs to be stored, and THEN that data needs to be leveraged somehow with some kind of business intelligence platform. You can't just dump that info into a database and be done, it has to be exposed in some meaningful manner. It always makes me shake my head when people who don't understand software/web/server/db development start throwing out these ideas like they are trivial.
It seems like every thread these days is some fluff thread that has nothign to do with the core of the game. At this point: Who cares if there's a living dragon that you zone into, it's a zone that has a theme, great. Who cares if corpses poof or dissolve or burst into a mass of flies? What we should care about are the core mechanics of spellcasting, combat, pathing, leveling, zone design, quest design, loot, etc. Do we really want the devs to be spending resources tweaking the game engine to play pretty cutscene videos while the game loads or do we want them working on AI?
Also, get off my lawn, old man yells at cloud.
If you have reasons that suggest that an idea wouldn't work, then it would be nice if you presented those reasons instead of accusing others for not already knowing them. This is a Pantheon forum and there are not technological knowledge prerequisites, so no idea should be off limits.
As to botters sticking together - I have seen it first hand. I have seen solo bots running around farming, but I have also seen autofollow support bots enabling the farming of the primary bot.
If you take the 5 nearest people every 15 minutes, then you're getting one string every 3 minutes. Over the course of 50 days played, you would have 24k strings for a file size of just under a meg (assuming a string size of 30 bytes). If you cap it at that file size and just delete old data in favor of new, then you have a somewhat sizeable file for each player. To cover a million players in Pantheon, then that scales up to 1 TB of data. I don't think we're talking about massive storage centers here. This may all be faulty accounting, since (as you have accurately guessed) I'm not an expert in this stuff. From what I can tell though, it's not as crazy as you claim it is. All you need to sort the data is an account number or player name with associated server. Please, if you are an expert, then don't shrug your shoulders and wish we were all educated, explain and teach.
On a final note - why does guilt by association not work? If someone is grouping primarily with those who get banned for botting, then I would argue that they should be banned.
Edits - to come off less combative.
Hateborn said:Aradune said:Let me try to throw you guys a curve ball
Pretty much everything has been covered here. I will just attach my personal opinion on a plex/WoW Token type system.
Why? Why even entertain the thought. To be honest, even adding this on one isolated server is like a gated community allowing a coner of the subdivision to have double wide trailers with camaros parked in the yard.
Even if a player chooses to not play on a plex server, why even attach that stigma to the game. MMOs nowadays are very VERY word of mounth and MMO players are VERY flighty and you have a lot of MMO competition coming out...So when we tell a friend that this new game Pantheon is coming out and it's devoid of all the free to play, cash shop type features that have ruined the genre for most, are we gonna say....oh but they DO have one server where you can use real life cash to buy a plex and sell it in game for game money.
While i do not think it is a bad idea in certain OTHER games..can we not have it even associated with this one?
We dont need it, Brad.
#TeamOgre
Very well said, and I agree exactly. We do not need this, Brad.
Ainadak said:Krixus said:lol. This some serious big brother craziness. You're essentially talking about some kind of guilt by association mechanic. And what data do you have that proves people who bot or exploit would be near each other when doing so? There is none, it's pure conjecture. You want the game to TRACK the other players you are near? Do you have ANY idea the kind of resources required to make that happen? First of all, that's a tremendous amount of data that needs to be stored, and THEN that data needs to be leveraged somehow with some kind of business intelligence platform. You can't just dump that info into a database and be done, it has to be exposed in some meaningful manner. It always makes me shake my head when people who don't understand software/web/server/db development start throwing out these ideas like they are trivial.
It seems like every thread these days is some fluff thread that has nothign to do with the core of the game. At this point: Who cares if there's a living dragon that you zone into, it's a zone that has a theme, great. Who cares if corpses poof or dissolve or burst into a mass of flies? What we should care about are the core mechanics of spellcasting, combat, pathing, leveling, zone design, quest design, loot, etc. Do we really want the devs to be spending resources tweaking the game engine to play pretty cutscene videos while the game loads or do we want them working on AI?
Also, get off my lawn, old man yells at cloud.
If you have reasons that suggest that an idea wouldn't work, then it would be nice if you presented those reasons instead of accusing others for not already knowing them. This is a Pantheon forum and there are not technological knowledge prerequisites, so no idea should be off limits.
As to botters sticking together - I have seen it first hand. I have seen solo bots running around farming, but I have also seen autofollow support bots enabling the farming of the primary bot.
If you take the 5 nearest people every 15 minutes, then you're getting one string every 3 minutes. Over the course of 50 days played, you would have 24k strings for a file size of just under a meg (assuming a string size of 30 bytes). If you cap it at that file size and just delete old data in favor of new, then you have a somewhat sizeable file for each player. To cover a million players in Pantheon, then that scales up to 1 TB of data. I don't think we're talking about massive storage centers here. This may all be faulty accounting, since (as you have accurately guessed) I'm not an expert in this stuff. From what I can tell though, it's not as crazy as you claim it is. All you need to sort the data is an account number or player name with associated server. Please, if you are an expert, then don't shrug your shoulders and wish we were all educated, explain and teach.
On a final note - why does guilt by association not work? If someone is grouping primarily with those who get banned for botting, then I would argue that they should be banned.
Edits - to come off less combative.
I've witnessed whole guilds of botters, so no they don't tend to work in onesies, twosies. hehe I am hoping people play the game with "see it, tell it" in mind. :) I will keep doing my part. Don't want Pantheon overrun with botters.
Hello Brad,
I don't get much time on here but I read this while on a walk I had to respond.
I used in game currency in World of Warcraft to purchase a month of subscription 4 times in a row. It had a few side effects. The first side effect was COOL! I just saved $60!. But the other side effect was I hated the game even more than I did. In order for me to gain enough resources to purchase the item was far too much for a guy like me who has very limited time. The time I played the game was spent doing things I didn't really want to do.
What am I getting at?
I think including a similar system may fascilitate some bad player habits. You will definitely have to weigh the pro's and cons for yourself Brad. I think its a good idea to get your hands dirty with an alternate rules set server to try it out. I will also point out now is the time to try this particular thing because the affects of this type of thing need a pretty large sample size of data. It would be neat if you had some people you could talk to that have done this. Didn't smedly do this somewhere? (Not sure if you two talk or not).
Glad to see you post Brad, love your work and i'm excited for the future,
-Todd
First off, I am very against the whole PLEX idea.
However, if you wanted to create an alternate ruleset server for something like that, it has to be done in a way that keeps the benefits localized to that server. The best way to do this would be to treat the PLEX enabled server as a completely different game with a different account, so that the time gained from PLEX items would not transfer to other servers.
Otherwise you are encouraging the trade of items on one server for time on all servers, including the non-PLEX servers.
@Aradune
I think it's a valid thought to have. You guys are covering every inch of this game with questions about how your players can enjoy it and the possibilites. Some people are against it, but in the end it's up to you and your team anyways. It's good to get feedback from the community though. As we have experience with this sort of thing. Let me tell you though, being able to play Archeage without giving them my money made me rather happy. Only difference is they didn't get MY money, they got someone elses... So in the end, they still got their money.
As long as you put in specific rules to make sure people don't abuse this system, then I don't see how it can be harmful to accept money for something called PLEX. Guilds have members that sometimes hit rough spots.. a good way to help them is allowing others to buy plex or maybe start a fund of ingame currency to buy plex. We just dont want someone to be a millionaire with plat by the first year. Because that wouldn't make any sense. So you limit the amount people can buy. And make it so only subscribers can buy. If they can afford plex, they can afford to just subscribe the normal way. But if someone wants to make extra change to allow others to play for free, I don't see the harm in that. Especially if it adds players to the population.
I do see what others say though. It's a touchy thing to deal with and it's mostly failed in every other case. People will just throw their money at the game, buy this currency subscription and sell like 50 at a time to make a ton of plat to just buy whatever they want in game.
Maybe you don't add it in right away. Give it a year or two and see what happens. As long as the cash shop, P2W, and gambling aspect don't exist like in most of these games, I'll be happy. You're not forcing people to buy or use PLEX. It's an option. And many of us have even used this option in other games.